1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved electronic catalogue system, and a server, a computer program and a recording medium used in this electronic catalogue system.
The present invention more particularly relates to an electronic catalogue system with which it is possible to look at commercial products from various angles, and a server, a computer program and a recording medium used in this electronic catalogue system.
2. Description of the Related Art
As high-performance personal computers have become widely used in households and telecommunications technologies such as the Internet have advanced, systems such as Internet shopping which allow people to enjoy shopping through computers which are connected to the Internet have developed and put into actual use.
Allowing users to do shopping without going out, such a system is convenient to the users. On the contrary, since the users cannot pickup actual products with hand, it is difficult for the users to learn about the sizes of the products, etc. While the sizes of the products may be displayed on a screen as numerical figures, the users merely looking at such figures can not easily have a sensory grasp on the sizes of the products.
Noting this, methods requiring to improve the visual image of a commercial product to display on a computer screen have been proposed. For instance, among the proposed methods is a method which require to display on a screen side by side the image of a product viewed from one direction and the image of an article for comparison (JP1997-218769A). With this method, if a commercial product is a product which has been widely known from before, most users can develop sensory perception of the size of the product based on information the users have learned so far.
However, if a commercial product is a product which a user sees for the first time, the image of the product viewed from one direction alone does not permit the user to easily develop a good feeling on the size of the product. Further, even though the product has existed from before, if the product was largely modified in terms of size or to adopt an innovative design, it is possible that the user will fail to grasp the size of the product and accordingly have false recognition. The problems above are increasingly likely, as the market these days demand new products, products having small sizes or products having innovative designs.